"And you immediately reported your trouble?" Braddock inquired.
"Sure. I was in contact with Lieutenant Foster the whole time."
"I realized we'd lost Giordano," Foster said. "It was 3:30 the peak period was beginning, and the freeways were beginning to pack. We're spread too thin, Tim. If we'd had three times our capability, we still couldn't have covered all possibilities—not short of a general alert. I had to cover the Golden State, the San Bernardino, the Santa Ana, and I couldn't even positively write off the harbor."
"Yeah," Braddock grunted. His guts were faintly churning.
"And remember, we had no way of knowing that Bolan was even interested in Giordano at that particular time. If I'd punched the panic button and sent all the Hardcase vehicles scurrying after Giordano, that would have left the rest of the possibilities free and clear for Bolan to tap. You said he was a brilliant tactician. I had to assume that..."
"Of course, Andy," Braddock interrupted. "You played it right. No criticism there."
"I played it safe, not right," Foster muttered. "I alerted the neighboring communities and asked them to put out a soft watch for the Giordano vehicles, and then I stewed and chewed my nails and waited for a contact report."
The other lieutenant present, Charlie Rickert, joined the discussion at that point. The man unofficially referred to as "the twenty-four-hour cop" said, The biggest goof was our failure to tail Bruno Scarelli. I think that was dumb. He was our one sure lead to Giordano's destination."
Carl Lyons flushed a deep scarlet. "I had to make a decision, and I made it," he said. "I detained Scarelli as long as I could, without tipping our hand. Couldn't tail him myself, not with that rear fender buckled in on the wheel. When one of those big cars tap your butt, you damn well know you've been tapped." He rubbed the back of his neck and scowled at Rickert.
"I sent a car to cover Scarelli," Foster reported, tight lipped. "Got there about thirty seconds late and lost him right back at that same damn interchange."
"I still think..."
Rickert's knife-twisting rejoiner was interrupted by the appearance of a uniformed officer in the doorway. "Got that report from the Riverside lab, Captain," he announced.
"Let's hear it," Braddock clipped.
"It was an armor-piercing projectile, all right. Probably fired from a bazooka. Slammed into the Rolls just forward of the doorpost, angling in from the rear. Instant death for the two men in front. The other scars were made by steel-jacketed slugs from a fifty-caliber machine gun. Each of the vehicles was pretty thoroughly worked over by that fifty."
"Thanks, Art," Braddock replied. The uniformed officer smiled and went away, shaking his head. "Full-scale warfare," Braddock growled.
"And the neatest ambush I've ever ..." Foster commented, his voice trailing off into quiet speculation.
Rickert reached into his pocket, withdrew a long metallic object, and tossed it onto Braddock's desk. "There was a small mountain of these fifty-caliber casings in the rocks over against the butte," he said.
Braddock picked up the casing and absently turned it end over end in his big hand. "They had that jeep out there, that's certain," he concluded. "Now somebody tell me how they can run around in an armed jeep without arousing curiosity? Where are they getting this heavy stuff—the bazooka and all that crap? How the hell did they move that heavy boulder onto the road? How the hell ... ?
Lieutenant Rickert sighed heavily and produced a small notebook from his jacket pocket. "I may have some answers," he said. "I spent the past three hours sifting through the various reports, and . . . well, just listen. From the Bel Air investigation: The jeep was last seen proceeding north on Skylane Drive. Yet two witnesses at the next intersection, swear that no jeep came past them. Aside from the police and fire-department vehicles, the only moving thing reported through that intersection, in that time period, was a large diesel semitrailer van. The witness paid it very little attention, and couldn't recall any identifying decals, or even the color." Rickert glanced at Sergeant Lyons. "Next I quote from Carl's report: '… and I was forced to follow a slow-moving semitrailer into the cloverleaf.'" Rickert smiled wryly. "You did not specify, Carl. This wouldn't have been a van-type trailer, would it?"
Lyons silently nodded his head, staring speculatively into the lieutenant's eyes.
"Uh-huh. The plot thickens. Now—from the statement by Giordano's accountant, the sole survivor of the ambush: "Mr. Giordano thought we were being followed on the way out there, and we even waited at the back road to let them catch up; he was trying to lure them into a trap. But the only thing that came along was a big diesel truck. It was a blue-and-white moving van, I believe." Rickert angled a glance at the captain. "It, uh, could be entirely coincidental. Then, again, there could be an answer in there."
A fire had been lighted in Braddock's eyes. The clever bastard," he murmured.
"You think it's too strong for coincidence?" Foster asked.
"I'm not leaving anything to coincidence!" Brad-dock snapped. "Not when Bolan's hand is in it." He whirled around to his desk and shuffled through a pile of papers, came up with one, and hastily skimmed down the typewritten lines. "Here it is," he announced. This is the transcript of the interrogation of Gerald Young, the accountant. He was questioned as to why Giordano had felt they were being tailed. He says: 'Well, I thought so myself. There were these same two cars that kept showing up behind us. One was a blue Ford sedan, late model, and the other was an older station wagon, a big one. Maybe a Buick or a Mercury." Braddock's eyes swung to Carl Lyons. "Ring any bells, Sergeant?"
The young officer's eyes were haunted pools of revelation. The blue Ford joined the procession at Lani Way," he growled. The wagon joined up at the arterial, just behind me. We hit the on ramp in that order—the big Continental, the Rolls, the Ford, me, the station wagon. Then everything got scrambled up when we moved into the freeway traffic. I was concentrating on the Rolls."
They had you spotted all the way!" Rickert howled. "Hell, boy, they suckered you and packaged you off neat and clean."
"How the hell was I supposed to keep on Giordano and every other damn car on the freeway at the same time? I never gave a passing thought to those other cars—and certainly not to a semi. Who would?"
"Carl is right," Braddock muttered. "Anyone would have jerked up damn quick, though, if a military jeep with a wicked-looking machine gun on the rear deck had joined the parade. That clever bastard. That's how he's doing it. He's using a Trojan horse. He could pack a small armored unit in that van."
"I wouldn't be surprised if the sonofabitch had a tank in there," Foster declared.
Braddock ignored the remark. "Carl—think carefully now. Which vehicle actually sprung the trap on you? The Ford or the wagon?"
"Neither one," Lyons replied immediately. "I've been trying to ... I was so pissed off, I ... Wait, now. I was wondering why he was going so slow, and it ... Sure! It was a sports car, a red sports car!"
"What make?"
"Damn, I ... Out-of-state tags. I remember, now, I was thinking, if you can't drive on our freeways, even with a roadrunner like that one, then keep the hell off. Then I started around him, and that was all she wrote."
"The timing for that little trick must have been fantastic," Foster observed. "And it couldn't have been just a spontaneous thing. They had to have radios in those cars."
"Goddammit!" Braddock said softly.
"That adds an entire new dimension to this thing," Rickert put in.